Wednesday, October 16, 2013

We finished the final MEAP tests in 4th and 5th grades today...YAHOO! For those of you not in Michigan, the MEAP is our state assessment. We've been testing for two weeks and are finally done.

This means I can get back to my normal intervention schedule with my kindergarten kiddos! The kindergarten classrooms are my happy place. Being a former kindergarten teacher, I love being able to work with these little sponges whenever I can.

The kindergarten interventions begin as soon as the teachers complete their beginning of the year assessments the first week of school. Our district began this new system last year and it has worked very well. For the first week, our kindergarten students only attend a half day. The teacher's other half of the day is spent individually assessing their new students. As a result, they get to know their students, spend some quality one on one time and I get their data by the second week of school. This means the alphabet recognition interventions can be started during the second/third week of school.

We follow Richard Allington's philosophy that all kindergarten children know ALL 52 letters by Halloween. This means daily intervention by the classroom parapros or myself, and bi-weekly progress monitoring. We're making progress, but still have some kiddos I'm concerned about. So, last week I sent progress notes home to parents with a mini ABC book to trace with their fingers while saying the letter name, and made a cute "I Have, Who Has?" game for my awesome kindergarten teachers to use with all of their students. You can grab yours by clicking on the picture below.

Hope you enjoy the rest of your week. For all of you 3rd, 4th & 5th grade Michigan teachers, do a "Happy Dance" to celebrate the end of MEAP!